The program Valor Afegit makes a report about mental health at the UAB
16/07/2018
The past Thursday, June the 10th, the program Valor Afegit broadcasted in TV3 a short audiovisual report about the activities that have been done at the UAB during this academic year under the framework of the motto of the FM17: Mental Health, visible and without stigmas. At the beginning of the year, the PhD Sara Moreno, vice-rector of Students and Employability, included the motto in an announcement published in the Autonomous’ website.
According to experts, one of every four people will suffer some kind of mental disruption during their lives. “Making it visible contributes to knowledge, stopping taboos and stigmas”, explained Sara Moreno in the report of Valor Afegit.That is the reason why all the actions promoted during the year in the UAB’s Campus aimed to make visible mental illnesses. In the video appeared some of them, like the theatre play called La follia dels ocells, of the theatre company La Trifulga dels Fútils.
The play was the closing ceremony of all the activities under the framework of the motto of the mental health and was announced to the university community last May 23rd at the Theatre of the UAB. The company that did it, La Trifulga dels Fútils, was born in 2000 and it is formed by people with or without a mental illness diagnosed, professional actors and actresses and people that are not professionals in the world of the theatre but wanted to participate in this project.
In this audiovisual report there are also the first-person testimonies of two UAB students, Georgina Giner and Xavier Tudor. These students suffer from mental illnesses and explain the difficulties they experienced in order to progress in their studies: “University is hard for the people who has mental illnesses”, explained Georgina. Because of these difficulties, Georgina lost her grant and Xavi repeated one grade, increasing his tuition price.
The blog of Mental Health and the activities
Continuing with the motto of the FM17, last January 25th the blog uab.cat/salutmental was opened. In this space, students could find publicity of activities related to mental health that would be carried out at the UAB’s Campus, like Mental health and TV series: treatment and stigma. Moreover, students were given some resources so they could learn about the social stigma that people with mental illness suffer and fight against it.
In the closing ceremony of the activities about mental health, vice-rector Sara Moreno did a brief balance of the activities carried out at the Campus. Among others, the conference in October by the mountain climber Edurne Pasabán, the creation of the blog about mental health, the days dedicated to labour market and people mentally ill and also the agreement with Parc Taulí so the PDI and the PAS could be informed about the topic. Also, the recent creation of the Living Lab in mental health, that aims to improve the emotional well-being of the university community.